


Vengeance

by Avirra



Series: An Unholy Alliance [16]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Mirror Universe
Genre: Gen, Mirror Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 01:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avirra/pseuds/Avirra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The time to exact payback for McCoy's injuries has arrived.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vengeance

**Author's Note:**

> As a note, in my version of the Mirror-verse, the emphasis is on political maneuvering and manipulation rather than on violence and sex - though violence and sex are both certainly have their places (nothing overly graphic). Think in terms of more Machiavelli and less Caligula. Some cursing is also present.

The school break ended and McCoy returned to his class schedule as if nothing at all had happened over the break. He even passed by some of the very cadets that had beaten him in the halls, showing no indication that he remembered a thing. At first, they were wary of him, then they began mocking him behind his back. Either they had beaten him enough that he didn't remember what happened or he did remember and was too chicken-shit to do anything about it. Either way, they were in the clear.

Watching over events from a distance, even Pike and Puri were beginning to wonder if their toys had possibly gotten cold feet. After discussing it with one another, they decided to let things go at their own pace - even if that pace proved to be a full stop. It wasn't until March 15th by the old Earth calendar that things began to happen, but when they did start, it was like watching a pattern of carefully laid dominoes begin to fall.

Hurrying away from his last class, Cadet Julius Presli was headed toward an isolated spot to meet up with Cadet Jarl Forseth. Both of them had been involved in the attack on McCoy even though neither of them had even so much as met the doctor before that. They had been relieved that there hadn't been any repercussions so far, but word had come to them that one of the other cadets that had been there that day was about to confess everything. That could ruin all of their careers and for what? Some idiot that didn't even remember what happened?

As he entered the designated area, Julius frowned. It was very dark inside. Edging his way in carefully, he called out.

"Jarl?"

The voice that answered wasn't Jarl's. The voice was deeper and rich with a thick Southern drawl.

"Jarl's here, but I'm afraid you aren't likely to have a lot of luck getting an answer out of him. Unless you brought along one of those old Ouija board things."

Julius immediately spun around only to find Kirk leaning in the doorway with an unpleasant smile firmly in place.

"Your choice of the hard way or the easy way, Julie. Outcome is going to be the same either way."

In full panic, Julius swung at Kirk. Kirk blocked the punch easily before sending Julius to the floor with his own punch. Taking the time to shut the door, Kirk shook his head as he ordered the lights to come up.

"Guess what, Bones. He's only good in fights with six-to-one odds."

McCoy's voice was dry as he strolled over.

"Really? Imagine my surprise. Hello, Julius."

McCoy stood over Julius and began dropping something onto the downed man's chest, one at a time. Kirk was a bit disappointed when the man started to blubber when he finally recognized the items as the gold Imperial symbols that were on the collars of the cadet red uniform. Five of them. McCoy kept speaking as it nothing were happening.

"You know, my momma was a English teacher back in the day. Big fan of Shakespeare. Read that stuff to me until it was stuck in my head. When I finally got all the names, I saw yours and decided you were going to be last. Know why? Julius. I've always liked that name, but you don't run into too many people named Julius these days. Momma said it was because of some sort of orange drink that got popular. Nobody wanted to name their kid after a drink. But I digress."

"You can ask Jim. I looked over the names and pointed you out. Said 'Jim? I want to send these SOBs to hell on March 15th.' The ides of March. Kind of poetic, don't you think? Or are you still freaking out too much about this whole 'I'm about to die' shit to appreciate the amount of trouble I went to on your behalf?"

Kneeling beside Julius, McCoy's fingers deftly removed the gold emblem from his collar. Julius followed the gold glint with his eyes and missed the movement of McCoy's other hand until the hiss and slight sting alerted him that he'd received an injection. McCoy held one shoulder down as Kirk moved to hold the other down.

"No need to get all sweaty trying to do anything fancy, Julius. You won't be able to move much more than your head soon. In fact, I think you can let go of him now, Jim. You know, I should have asked while you could still talk, Julius, but hopefully you don't have anyone back home that will be expecting a body to bury. Won't be enough left of you for that."

Shifting his attention to Kirk and ignoring the man between them, McCoy began to regather the gold pins.

"You know, Jim? It's a downright shame that I can't hang onto these to remember them by."

"Maybe next time, Bones. But I think these would be better gift-wrapped and sent to Pike."

"That's probably for the best. Won't be sending them until we have our little heart to heart with Doctor Slater though."

Smiling, McCoy turned his attention back to Julius.

"Do you have any idea just how many ways there are to kill a man, Julius? Especially someone in your current condition? There are so many and I haven't even tried them all yet. See this hypo here? I've got a little formula in it that I developed a few years back when I was an intern and bored. Bet you can't guess what it does. Jim, you care to take a guess?"

"Well, you've bragged about the number of poisons that you know. Is that one of them?"

"Not this one. This one here will cause a rapid displacement of calcium from the bones."

After explaining the first part to Kirk,  McCoy looked down on Julius and began giving him the details.

"Once it starts working on your rib cage, your ribs will start collapsing. At that point, it might be a race to see whether your heart will stop beating due to the extra pressure on it or if you suffocate because your lungs won't be able to expand properly any more. Care to make a wager?"

"Not this time. I need to get things ready for Doctor Slater."

"Is it that time already? Sorry, Julius, but I guess we need to get this out of the way."

Pressing the hypospray firmly against Julius, McCoy released the contents, then tucked the instrument back into his pouch before getting up and paying no further attention to the slowly dying man on the floor.

* * *

It had taken Gaila a total of six weeks of careful observation, questions and sleeping with the right people before she was able to get the name of Doctor Benjamin Slater for McCoy. The name hadn't meant anything to him, but it didn't take a great deal of research to discover that the man had been a rival of Doctor David McCoy and an unsuccessful rival at that. It didn't take a great deal of imagining to suppose that he'd decided to take the grudge against the father out on the son.

Slater had been cautious the first month after the attack, but after two months had gone by without any signs of repercussions, he let his guard relax and Gaila was able to get close enough for her pheromones to do their work. She found him repulsive but since she had been adamant that she was going to help deal with McCoy's attackers, she pushed her personal feelings aside and began sleeping with him.

It was a huge relief to her when Kirk slipped a note to her with a time and place. At McCoy's suggestion, Gaila had already gotten Slater used to her asking him to meet her at unusual places for sex (the roof of the Admissions building, the locker room of the Academy's track team and cargo bay of the shuttlecraft mockup to name a few), so the whispered instructions for where and when their next meeting would be was accepted without question.

When she met Kirk and McCoy to let them know it was all set, the two men gave her a very enjoyable evening before giving her very firm instructions to make sure she was both off campus and in a very public setting when the time of the appointment came. It had been noted by that point that Gaila and Slater were often see going to different places together and they wanted to make sure that nothing about Slater's disappearance would come back on her.

Gaila decided to kill two birds with one stone. Her roommate, Nyota Uhura, had been trying to drag her off campus for a day of shopping, but Gaila had been putting her off - ostensibly because of Gaila's engineering projects. When Gaila told her that she'd be free that day, Uhura brightened up and immediately began making plans. From the sound of it, Gaila wouldn't have any problem meeting the requirement to be in very public places.

Now, it was nearly time, but instead of finding Gaila waiting, Doctor Slater would be finding himself alone with Kirk and McCoy. The pair were waiting for his arrival with slight impatience, Kirk was perched on a stool he'd located somewhere and munching on an apple while McCoy was idly toying with the hypospray in his hand. They both looked slightly bored until they heard the door opening, then they transformed immediately into predators. Cats watching a mouse hole after hearing movement.

Slater stepped inside, allowing the door to shut behind him. The lights were dim, but that also wasn't anything he wasn't already accustomed to at the meeting places with Gaila. He didn't order the lights up - she had teasingly scolded him for impatience when he'd done that before.

As Slater moved further into the room, Kirk silently moved between him and the door. His and McCoy's eyes were adjusted to the dim lighting and he could see McCoy watching with anticipation as Slater got closer to the body on the floor. When the toe of Slater's boot came in contact with Julius, McCoy smiled as he spoke.

"Computer - lights up twenty percent."

Despite the unexpected voice, Slater's eyes went first to his feet to see what he had hit. The sight of Cadet Presli laying there, looking like a half-deflated balloon, made the bile rise in his throat, but he couldn't look away even as McCoy began speaking again.

"Why, Ben - a body might almost think that you didn't expect that the piper would eventually have to be paid. You knew my father and you knew what a total bastard he could be. Did you really think I was going to just roll over and ignore what was done to me?"

Then Kirk spoke up using an equally condescending tone.

"And even if he'd been willing to let bygones be bygones, do you think I was going to feel the same way? McCoy is mine and nobody touches what's mine."

"Why, Jim, how very possessive of you."

A smirk came to Kirk's face as McCoy's tone indicated that he didn't mind in the least. Finally able to pull his eyes away from Presli's body, Slater turned and looked from McCoy to Kirk. At the look on their faces, he instinctively backed up - and promptly tripped over Presli's remains. As Slater hit the floor, both Kirk and McCoy drew closer.

"You'll never get away with this!"

The laughter from McCoy was dark.

"No need for you to be concerned about little old me, Ben. I learned how to cover my tracks before I killed Daddy."

Slater's eyes grew wider.

"But - your father died of that disease. The one you discovered the cure for two weeks after he died."

Kirk's attention shifted to McCoy in time to see him give a little shrug.

"Technically, I discovered that cure two weeks before he died. I considered it payback for that shrew he set me up to marry."

McCoy lifted his hypospray, looking over it as he continued speaking.

"I gave serious thought to something similar for you. Something long, drawn out and painful. But you know, after I gave it further thought, I realized that you really aren't worth that much investment in time, Ben. You ever read my paper on neural rejuvenation? I was mighty proud of that little work back when I was twenty-four, but you know what I'm even prouder of right now? I know how to degrade the neural pathways too. Jim?"

Slater tried to scramble away, but Kirk was too quick for him and the older doctor was no match for Kirk's strength. McCoy hummed to himself as he took his time coming over, bending over just long enough to inject Slater.

"I'll explain quickly because you really don't have a lot of time to absorb this, Ben. All of the neural pathways that your brain has spent a lifetime creating are going to start shutting down in about three minutes. Your more recent memories will go first, so you won't even be able to dwell on the fantastic sex you had with Gaila for long. Then you'll forget sending those boys after me. Then you'll forget every scrap of Medical knowledge you ever learned. I'm estimating that in about thirty minutes, your brain will forget how to do things like blink and swallow. Shortly after that, it will forget little things like how to make your lungs and heart work. Thirty minutes really isn't a long time to make you suffer, but I'm willing to bet that it will seem longer than that to you."

McCoy moved away, going to the stool Kirk had been using and sitting down.

"Go ahead and let go of him if you like, Jim. We can stop him from leaving and in a couple more minutes? He won't even remember why he'd want to leave."

As Kirk got up and brushed himself off before joining McCoy, Slater's remaining coherent thoughts revolved around the way that Kirk and McCoy began laughing and joking with one another as if no-one else were in the room. 

* * *

 It was a week later that Spock approached Kirk and McCoy again as they exited the main building. They stopped in unison when they saw him and waited for his approach.

"Cadet McCoy, the names of those responsible for your assault have been found."

McCoy gave Spock a look that radiated pure curiosity.

"Is that a fact? Does that mean that I'm going to get to see them prosecuted?"

The Vulcan's face was stern.

"That does not seem likely. They all seem to have disappeared last week."

Kirk frowned at that.

"They must have known their identities had been tracked and fled the Academy."

The dark eyes moved to Kirk.

"Somehow I doubt that, Cadet Kirk. As they all apparently abandoned their possessions, the more likely scenario would be that they have been killed."

A low whistle came from McCoy at that.

"My, my. Imagine that. If you find out if they really are dead and who might be responsible, let me know. My momma brought me up to write thank you notes when someone does me a favor."

"This is not a joking matter, Cadet McCoy. I highly suspect that you are behind the disappearances."

"Why? Because I won't shed any tears if they are dead, Lieutenant Commander? You want a mourner for those sorry bastards, you're barking up the wrong tree."

Taking a small amount of pity and a large amount of amusement at the look of confusion on Spock's face, Kirk explained.

"Barking up the wrong tree \- that means that you're looking in the wrong place, sir."

Spock's expression shifted and he gave McCoy a look that plainly said 'you could have simply said that to begin with'. McCoy just gave him a smile back.

"Is there anything else we can do for you, Lieutenant Commander Spock?"

They could tell that there was more that Spock wanted to say, but he refrained and slowly shook his head.

"Nothing more for now, Cadet McCoy."

Taking that as their dismissal, Kirk and McCoy continued on their way to the mess hall.

As Spock watched them walk away, he contemplated the comments he had heard circulating around the campus about the pair. Local rumor had no doubts as to which individuals were behind the disappearances and their collaboration was commonly being called an unholy alliance. Spock was beginning to harbor doubts as to Captain Pike's wisdom regarding wanting both of them aboard the Enterprise. Perhaps he might need to make an intervention himself before that time arrived.


End file.
